How to Watch The Strain Online

If you like drama horror shows, The Strain is probably right up your alley. The show follows the life of Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (R), the head of the CDC’s Canary Team (R) in New York City. When a mysterious disease outbreak occurs in a crash-landed plane, the team discovers that it bears many similarities to an ancient strain of vampirism – not a bad premise for a TV show, if you ask me!

However, the important thing here isn’t the plot, or the characters, or the story – it’s where you can start watching it to begin with! As cord cutters, we face the unique issue of actually having to scour the internet for the best places to watch our favorite TV shows. After all, we don’t have a cable box sitting in front of us, airing our favorite TV shows.

The good news is that there’s a ton of great online viewing options for just about any TV show out there. Unfortunately, you won’t find it online for free – not legally, anyway. But, by picking from the options I’ll list below, you can save yourself a lot of money – without all the hassle of a cable contract.

If you’re completely new to The Strain, your best bet for getting into the show is going to be Yahoo! View (R) – a fairly limited streaming service, all things considered, but it does have the first 3 episodes of The Strain available for free.

Your next best option for getting the most for your money would be Hulu, which costs either $7.99/month for an ad-lite subscription or $11.99/month for an ad-free subscription. Hulu currently has the first 2 full seasons of The Strain available on demand, for you to binge at your leisure.

Here’s a definitive list of all on demand and live TV streaming services that have The Strain available.

On Demand and Live TV Streaming Services

The easiest way to watch virtually any TV show online is to catch it on demand. However, The Strain’s on demand viewing options are fairly limited, so if you really want to stick to a monthly subscription model, your next best bet is going to be to check out some of the live TV streaming services I mention below.

Hulu: Hulu currently has the first 2 seasons of The Strain available on demand, with two subscriptions available – $7.99 and $11.99, for ad-lite and ad-free viewing respectively.

Netflix: Netflix does not offer The Strain at this time.

Yahoo! View: You can view the first 3 episodes of The Strain’s first season for free via Yahoo! View.

Sling TV (R): Sling TV’s Sling Blue package ($25/mo) offers FX, which means you can catch The Strain live whenever it airs – and record it using Sling TV’s Cloud DVR functionality.

DirecTV Now : DirecTV Now is the least efficient way to watch The Strain out of the three major online live TV streaming services, as it does not have Cloud DVR, and their cheapest package (Which does include FX, of course) is $35/month.

A la Carte Services

Not everybody wants to pay a monthly fee to watch their favorite shows (Or episodes of their favorite shows) – if that describes you, you’re in luck.

There’s plenty of “A la Carte” options out there, where you can buy specific seasons, or specific episodes of The Strain at will – allowing you to watch them whenever you like.

I’ll list the major services below, as well as pricing per season and episode and HD/SD availability.

Amazon Instant Video

Price Per Episode: $2.99 (HD), $1.99 (SD)

Season 1: $19.99 (HD), $14.99 (SD)

Season 2: $19.99 (HD), $14.99 (SD)

Season 3: $24.99 (HD), $16.99 (SD)

Google Play Store

Note: The Google Play Store doesn’t always offer clear information about whether a show is available in SD or HD, but based on the pricing (compared to other A la Carte services), it’s safe to assume it’s in SD unless otherwise stated.